After Nino Tempo and April Stevens hastily recorded a song called "Deep Purple", the master tape was sent to Atlantic Records producer Ahmet Ertegun, who said that the effort was not only embarrassing, but the worst thing Nino and April had ever done. After some pressure from Nino, Ertegun gave in and released the song as a single. It quickly soared to #1 on the Billboard Pop chart and enjoyed a twelve week run. The following year it won a Grammy Award for the Best Rock and Roll Recording of 1963.

Although she is mostly remembered for her hit "Stand By Your Man,” country singer Tammy Wynette has been married five times.

Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote "The Loco-Motion" with the hope that Dee Dee Sharp would record it. For the demo, they asked their infant daughter's baby sitter, Eva Boyd to sing the song. Sharp's producers turned it down, but their publishing firm liked the demo so much, they released it as a single, giving Little Eva a number one record.

The videos for Neil Young’s song “This Note’s For You” lampooned corporate rock sponsorship. The video featured a faux Michael Jackson with his hair on fire, an obvious reference to the accident that occurred while the gloved one was shooting a Pepsi commercial. Stunned MTV immediately banned the video, only to declare it Best Video of the Year at the 1989 Video Music Awards.

In the fall of 1958, Neil Diamond entered New York University on a fencing scholarship.

Brothers Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks took sibling rivalry to new heights. Dining in a Manhattan establishment in 1971, Dave tried to steal one of Ray’s french fries and was promptly stabbed in the chest with a fork by Ray.

Payback came during a Boston performance of the Kinks rock epic, “Preservation,” when Dave was so mad at his brother that he left the stage and played the whole show from behind a curtain.

Bobby Vinton found his biggest hit, "Roses Are Red" in a pile of reject demo records while he was waiting to be told of his release from his recording contract. He talked Epic Records management into letting him record the song and soon after, he and the label had their first million selling, number one smash.

Gale Garnett, who sang the Top 40 song, "We'll Sing In The Sunshine,” appeared in a number of episodes of the TV show Bonanza.

Madonna is a glutton for publicity. In a 1994 appearance on the David Letterman Show, she said the “F-Word” a total of thirteen times. Then she demanded that Letterman sniff her undies, to which a startled Letterman declined to do.

None of The Beatles played instruments on "Eleanor Rigby” though John Lennon and George Harrison did contribute harmony and backing vocals. Instead, Paul McCartney used a string octet of studio musicians, composed of four violins, two cellos, and two violas all working off a score written by producer George Martin.

The Eagles were not satisfied with record producer Glyn Johns. In fact, while they were recording their LP “Desperado” in 1973, drummer Don Henley asked Johns to make him sound like Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham. But John’s could only sigh and say, “You don’t play like John Bonham.”

Shock rock artist G.G.Allin had his share of classic escapades during his brief career (he died in 1993 from a heroin and cocaine overdose). Before a gig in New York, Allin entered a women’s restroom and asked for a volunteer to urinate in his mouth. One gal declined, but did give him the sanitary product that she had just removed. As Allin explained: “I just ate it right in front of her, just swallowed the whole thing.”

Even in death, strange circumstances followed G.G.Allin. He was buried in a leather jacket and a jockstrap upon which was written the epitaph “Eat Me.” At his open-coffin funeral, a microphone was positioned in his hand as well as a bottle of Jim Beam bourbon. His friends all took turns taking swigs from the bottle and put pills into the corpse’s mouth. Others pulled down the jockstrap, posed for pictures and drew on Allin’s corpse with a marker. Some friends.

In 1977, Pink Floyd created a forty-foot inflatable pig for a photo shoot. However, during the session, the renegade pig broke free from its moorings and drifted toward London’s Heathrow Airport. Pilots approaching Heathrow were amused to hear British aviation officials warn, “Pig on the loose!” The Pink Floyd pig eventually crashed into a farmer’s field and no injuries were reported. I guess pigs really do fly, or at least they did for one day.

"Let There Be Blood", the controversial re-recording of EXODUS' classic 1985 debut album "Bonded by Blood", has been released on limited-edition red vinyl. Only 2,500 numbered copies are available via Zaentz Records' web site. Zaentz Records

"Let There Be Blood" sold 2,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Issued on October 28 through Zaentz Records, the CD was recorded at Sharkbite Studios in Oakland, California; JKZ Production Studio in San Rafael, California; with vocal tracks recorded at J. Rod Production Studios in New City, New York. Andy Sneap mixed the album at his Backstage studio in Derbyshire, England.

Regarding the band's decision to re-record "Bonded By Blood", guitarist Gary Holt previously said: "It is our way of paying homage to Paul Baloff [former EXODUS vocalist who passed away in 2002] by showing how relevant these songs we had written together still are. We aren't trying to replace the original; that's impossible anyway. We are just giving these songs the benefit of modern production. It's something we talked about before Paul's death and it's always been important to us to do. We were super-excited about entering the studio once again to record these classics, and now it's back to writing the next studio record!"

Bad Plus/For All I Care/Telarc/LP/Also available as a numbered limited-edition autographed 180-gram 2-LP set with digital download card and bonus tracks: U2's ''New Years Day'' and Reid Anderson's ''You And I Is A Comfort Zone'"

Ben Kweller/Changing Horses/[2LP]/ATO

Black Gold/Rush/Red Bull/LP

Brian Eno & David Byrne/My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts [2 LP]/Nonesuch

Crispian St.Peters/The Pied Piper [2 LP]/Vinyl Lovers

Dawid Szczesny/Luxated Symmetry/[LP]/Porter Records

Dent May And His Magnificent/The Good Feeling Music Of Dent Paw Tracks/LP

Fear/The Record [LP] (180 Gram Vinyl)/Rhino

Fiction Family/Fiction Family/[LP]/(includes CD)/ATO

Fray/The Fray/[LP]/(with digital download)/Epic 88

Gong/Zero To Infinity [2 LP] (Picture Disc)/Vinyl Lovers

Herd (Peter Frampton)/The Fontana Years [2 LP]/Vinyl Lovers

Josh Reichmann Oracle Band/Life Is Legal/[EP]/Paperbag

Marty Paich /I Get A Boot Out Of You/[LP]/(180 Gram Vinyl Analog Mastering with insert)/Rhino Records

Exene Cervenka, co-leader and singer of the Californian punk band X, was born in Chicago in 1956.

Big Boi- Outkast (1975)

They Are Missed:

Rick James, US singer and Super Freak was born in 1948. Found dead at his Los Angeles home on August 6, 2004.

Paul Robi from The Platters died of cancer in 1989.

History:

In 1949, RCA Records issued the first ever 45rpm single.

In 1962, the Beatles played the Thistle Cafe in West Kirkby, England. It was their first gig under the management of Brian Epstein.

Joni Mitchell made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1969.

In 1964, the governor of Indiana asked the Indiana Broadcasters Association to ban "Louie Louie," claiming the Kingsmen's song was pornographic and made his ears tingle. DJs claim that it's impossible to decipher the true lyrics in the allegedly smutty hit.

Frank Sinatra sang "Too Romantic" and "The Sky Fell Down" in his first recording session with the Tommy Dorsey Band in 1940. Frank replaced Jack Leonard as lead singer with the band.

In 2008, US space agency Nasa announced that “Across the Universe” by the Beatles was to become the first song ever to be beamed directly into space. The track would be transmitted through the Deep Space Network - a network of antennas - on the 40th anniversary of the song being recorded, being aimed at the North Star, Polaris, 431 light-years from Earth. In a message to Nasa, Sir Paul McCartney said the project was an "amazing" feat. "Well done, Nasa," he added. "Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul."

In 2004, Janet Jackson inadvertently bared her breast when Justin Timberlake tugs at her costume during the Super Bowl half-time show in Houston, Texas.

George Michael and Elton John went to #1 on the US singles chart in 1992 with “Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me,” also #1 in the UK. All proceeds from the single went to Aids charities.

In 1988, the Cars announced they were breaking up after 12 years of working together.

In 1969, Led Zeppelin supported Iron Butterfly at the Fillmore East concert hall in New York. As Butterfly drummer Ron Bushy played his lengthy solo on "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," John Bonham launched a stage invasion, upsetting several Atlantic Records executives in the audience.

Tommy James and the Shondells started a two week run at #1 on the US singles chart in 1969 with “Crimson And Clover,” the groups second and last #1.

At Abbey Road studios in London in 1967, the Beatles started work on a new song “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.” It wasn't until the Beatles had recorded the song that Paul McCartney had the idea to make the song the thematic pivot for their forthcoming album.

17 year-old Neil Young performed his first professional date at a country club in Winnipeg in 1963.

Neil Sedaka had his second US #1 single in 1975 with “Laughter In The Rain,” over 12 years after his last chart topper “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.”

I found this cover to be very interesting, I am sure there is a reason for this great collage.

The Heartless Bastards' story starts in Dayton, Ohio, where Wennerstrom found the name on a multiple choice video trivia game at a bar.

As a songwriting teenager during a time when GBV and Brainiac were packing local bars and three of the Breeders were still in town, Wennerstrom used to sneak into clubs to check out the scene. "I would just see those people—my music heroes—hanging out at the bar like everyone else," she remembers. "I could see myself in them. It gave me inspiration to do my own thing."

After doing the usual business of playing local shows, the trio set out the following year on a regional tour. One of the first gigs of the trip took them to a bar in Akron, where Black Keys' drummer Patrick Carney just happened to be one of only a handful of people in the audience. This chance encounter led Wennerstrom and the Heartless Bastards to Fat Possum Records, with whom they released their debut, Stairs and Elevators, in early 2005.

The band moved on with critical praise in their back pocket, including a four-and-a-half star review from Rolling Stone, which took note that, when Wennerstrom “opens her throat on Stairs and Elevators … she sounds like she’s wailing on the shoulders of giants; her sad and angry vocals channeling all the swagger and spit of a young Robert Plant”

All This Time, was released during the summer of 2006, it received even more widespread critical acclaim than Stairs and Elevators. The Bastards played hundreds of shows to support the record. They played huge festivals and toured with Wilco & Lucinda Williams. Wennerstrom’s songs appeared often on TV shows & in films, this would be measured by most as a huge success. Though in Wennerstrom’s mind her sound and band were still evolving, and she knew it was time for a change.

In true ascetic discipline, she moved to Austin, Texas in 2007 for a change of inspirational scenery and a new recording project. With the help of producer Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Trail of Dead), she assembled a group of musicians with whom she gave the songs life and uncovered yet another layer of herself and the Heartless Bastards. The two new Bastards aren’t Texas ringers, but fellow Dayton brethren Dave Colvin on drums, and Jesse Ebaugh on bass, who actually played on the original demo that hooked Fat Possum.

The album, entitled The Mountain, delivers the powerful howl that fans expect from the Heartless Bastards, but also weaves in adventure with mandolins, banjos, strings and Erika’s transcendent voice.

The Mountain, a powerful howl, is due in January 2009, and the band will tour its ass off.